EAST OF SUEZ
PRESENT-DAY EGYPT
By Frederic Courtland Penfield, Former American Diplomatic
Agent and Consul-General to Egypt.
* * * * *
_Secretariat
du
Khédive_
RAS-EL-TEEN PALACE,
ALEXANDRIA, 4th November, 1899
FREDERIC C. PENFIELD, ESQUIRE,
Manhattan Club, New York.
My dear Sir:
I am commanded by H. H. The Khedive to
acknowledge the receipt of the copy of your
book "Present-Day Egypt," which you have
so kindly forwarded for his acceptance.
I am to say that His Highness has read it
with much pleasure and interest, as it is the
only book published on Egypt of to-day by
an author thoroughly acquainted with the
subject through long residence and official
position in the country.
I have the honor to be, Sir,
Your obedient servant,
(Signed) ALFRED B. BREWSTER,
Private Secretary to H. H. the Khedive.
* * * * *
Revised and Enlarged Edition. Fully illustrated.
Uniform with "East of Suez." 8vo. 396 pages. $2.50
The Century Co.,
Union Square New York
[Illustration: GULF OF MANAR PEARLING BOAT, AND DIVERS RESTING IN
THE WATER]
EAST OF SUEZ
CEYLON, INDIA, CHINA AND JAPAN
By
Frederic Courtland Penfield
Author of "Present-Day Egypt," etc.
Illustrated from Drawings and Photographs
"East is East, and West is West, and
never the twain shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at
God's great Judgment Seat."
_Kipling._
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1907
Copyright, 1906, 1907, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published, February, 1907_
THE DE VINNE PRESS
TO THE MEMORY OF
KATHARINE
Introductory
If books of travel were not written the stay-at-home millions would know
little of the strange or interesting sights of this beautiful world of
ours; and it surely is better to have a vicarious knowledge of what is
beyond the vision than dwell in ignorance of the ways and places of men
and women included in the universal human family.
The Great East is a fascinating theme to most readers, and every
traveler, from Marco Polo to the tourist of the present time, taking the
trouble to record what he saw, has placed every fireside reader under
distinct obligation.
So thorough was my mental acquaintance with India through years of
sympathetic study of Kipling that a leisurely survey of Hind simply
confirmed my impressions. Other generous writers had as faithfully
taught what China in reality was, and Mortimer Menpes, Basil Hall
Chamberlain, and Miss Scidmore had as conscientiously depicted to my
understanding the ante-war Japan. Grateful am I, as well, to the legion
of tireless writers attracted to the East by recent strife and conquest,
who have made Fuji more familiar to average readers than any mountain
peak in the United States; who have made the biographies of favorite
geishas known even in our hamlets and mining camps, and whose agreeable
iteration of scenes on Manila's lunetta compel our Malaysian capital to
be known as well as Coney Island and Atlantic City--they have so
graphically portrayed and described interesting features that of them
nothing remains to be told. But to know Eastern lands and peoples
without an intermediary is keenly delightful and compensating.
The travel impulse and longing for first-hand knowledge, native with
most mortals, is yearly finding readier expression. Our grandparents
earned a renown more than local by crossing the Atlantic to view England
and the Continent, while our fathers and mothers exploring distant
Russia and the Nile were accorded marked consideration. The wandering
habit is as progressive as catching, and what sufficed our ancestors
satisfies only in minor degree the longing of the present generation for
roving. Hence the grand tour, the circuit of the earth, is becoming an
ordinary achievement. And while hundreds of Americans are compassing the
earth this year, thousands will place the globe under tribute in seasons
not remote.
For many years to come India and Ceylon will practically be what they
are to-day, and sluggish China will require much rousing before her
national characteristics differ from what they are now; but of Japan it
is different, for, having made up their minds to remodel the empire, the
sons of Nippon are not doing things by halves, and the old is being
supplanted by the new with amazing rapidity.
Possibly it is a misfortune to find oneself incapable of preparing a
volume of travel without inflicting a sermon upon kindly disposed
persons, but a book of journeyings loaded with gentle preachment must at
least be a novelty. Travel books imparting no patriotic lesson may well
be left to authors and readers of older and self-sufficient nations. A
work appealing on common lines to a New World audience would be worse
than banal, and a conscientious American writer is compelled to describe
not alone what he saw, but in clarion notes tell of some things he
failed of seeing for our country, emerging but now from the formative
period, and destined to permanently lead the universe in material
affairs, is entitled to be better known in the East by its manufactures.
Every piece of money expended in travel is but the concrete form of
somebody's toil, or the equivalent of a marketed product: and
consequently it is almost unnecessary to remind that industry and thrift
must precede expenditure, or to assert that toil and travel bear
inseparable relationship. What the American, zigzagging up and down and
across that boundless region spoken of as East of Suez, fails to see is
the product of Uncle Sam's mills, workshops, mines and farms. From the
moment he passes the Suez Canal to his arrival at Hong Kong or Yokohama,
the Stars and Stripes are discovered in no harbor nor upon any sea; and
maybe he sees the emblem of the great republic not once in the transit
of the Pacific. And the products of our marvelous country are met but
seldom, if at all, where the American wanders in the East. He is
rewarded by finding that the Light of Asia is American petroleum, but
that is about the only Western commodity he is sure of encountering in
months of travel.
This state of things is grievously wrong, for it should be as easy for
us to secure trade in the Orient as for any European nation, and
assuredly easier than for Germany. We have had such years of material
prosperity and progress as were never known in the history of any
people, it is true; but every cycle of prosperity has been succeeded by
lean years, and ever will be. When the inevitable over-production and
lessened home consumption come, Eastern markets, though supplied at
moderate profit, will be invaluable. We are building the Panama Canal,
whose corollary _must_ be a mercantile fleet of our own upon the seas,
distributing the products of our soil and manufactories throughout the
world, and Secretary of State Root has made it easy for a better
understanding and augmented trade with the republics to the south of us.
But America's real opportunity is in Asia, where dwell more than half
the people of the earth, for the possibilities of commerce with the rich
East exceed those of South America tenfold. Uncle Sam merits a goodly
share of the trade of both these divisions of the globe.
The people of the United States must cut loose from the idea that has
lost its logic in recent years, that the Pacific Ocean _separates_
America from the lands and islands of Asia, and look upon it as a body
of water _connecting_ us with the bountiful East. The old theory was
good enough for our home-building fathers, but is blighting to a
generation aspiring to Americanize the globe. The genius of our nation
should cause our ploughs and harrows to prepare the valley and delta of
the Nile for tillage; be responsible for the whir of more of our
agricultural machinery in the fields of India; locate our lathes and
planers and drilling machines in Eastern shops, in substitution for
those made in England or Germany; be responsible for American
locomotives drawing American cars in Manchuria and Korea over rails
rolled in Pittsburgh, and induce half the inhabitants of southern Asia
to dress in fabrics woven in the United States, millions of the people
of Cathay to tread the earth in shoes produced in New England, and all
swayed to an appreciation of our flour as a substitute for rice--yes,
make it easy to obtain pure canned foods everywhere in China and Japan,
even to hear the merry click of the typewriter in Delhi, Bangkok and
Pekin.
Do we not already lead in foreign trade? We do, I gratefully admit; but
it is because we sell to less favored peoples our grains and fiber in a
raw state. Confessedly, these are self-sellers, for not a bushel of
wheat or ounce of cotton is sold because of any enterprise on our
part--the buyer must have them, and the initiative of the transaction is
his.
What economists regard as 'trade' in its most advantageous form, is the
selling to foreigners of something combining the natural products and
the handiwork of a nation--this is the trade that America should look
for in the East, and seek it now. It is not wild prophecy that within
five years a considerable number of the sovereign people of the country
controlling its growth will feel that it is carrying international
comity to the point of philanthropy to export cotton to England and
Japan to be there fabricated for the wear of every race of Asia, and
sold in successful competition with American textiles. In the pending
battle for the world's markets Uncle Sam should win trade by every
proper means, and not by methods most easily invoked; and let it ever be
remembered that shortsightedness is plainly distinct from altruism.
FREDERIC C. PENFIELD.
AUTHORS CLUB, NEW YORK CITY,
January 26, 1907.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE WORLD'S TURNSTILE AT SUEZ 3
II COLOMBO, CEYLON'S COSMOPOLITAN SEA-PORT 30
III THE LURE OF THE PEARL 50
IV UPWARD TO THE SHRINE OF BUDDHA 92
V IN CEYLON'S HILL COUNTRY 108
VI BOMBAY AND ITS PARSEE "JEES" AND "BHOYS" 126
VII THE VICARIOUS MAHARAJAH OF JEYPORE. 149
VIII THE WORLD'S MOST EXQUISITE BUILDING 168
IX BENARES, SACRED CITY OF THE HINDUS 185
X INDIA'S MODERN CAPITAL 205
XI ISLAND LINKS IN BRITAIN'S CHAIN OF EMPIRE 226
XII CANTON, UNIQUE CITY OF CHINA 244
XIII MACAO, THE MONTE CARLO OF THE FAR EAST 267
XIV THE KAISER'S PLAY FOR CHINESE TRADE 290
XV JAPAN'S COMMERCIAL FUTURE 315
INDEX 345
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
GULF OF MANAR PEARLING BOAT, AND DIVERS RESTING
IN THE WATER Frontispiece
From drawing by Corwin K. Linson.
PORT SAID ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL, SHOWING DE
LESSEPS'S STATUE 8
From photograph by Georgilada Kip.
ITALIAN WARSHIP STEAMING THROUGH CANAL 13
CARGO STEAMER IN THE CANAL AT KILOMETER 133 25
From photograph by Georgilada Kip.
THE JETTY AT COLOMBO 32
HINDU SILVERSMITHS, COLOMBO 38
From photograph by Skeen & Co.
A HIGH PRIEST OF BUDDHA 42
From photograph by Colombo Apothecaries Co., Ltd.
REPRESENTATION OF BUDDHA'S TOOTH, COLOMBO MUSEUM 46
MAP OF THE GULF OF MANAR, "THE SEA ABOUNDING IN PEARLS" 53
COOLIES CARRYING PEARL OYSTERS FROM THE BOATS TO THE
GOVERNMENT "KOTTU" 60
From drawing by Corwin K. Linson.
THE LATE RANA OF DHOLPUR IN HIS PEARL REGALIA 67
From photograph by Johnston & Hoffmann.
INDIAN PEARL MERCHANTS READY FOR BUSINESS, MARICHCHIKKADDI 74
From drawing by Corwin K. Linson.
THE LATE MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA IN HIS PEARL REGALIA 83
From photograph by Johnston & Hoffmann.
A LADY OF KANDY 94
From photograph by Skeen & Co.
TEMPLE OF THE TOOTH, KANDY 99
From photograph by Colombo Apothecaries Co., Ltd.
CREMATION OF A BUDDHIST PRIEST 105
From photograph by Platé & Co.
TREES IN PERADENIYA GARDEN, KANDY 111
From photographs by Frederic C. Penfield.
TAMIL COOLIE SETTING OUT TEA PLANTS 115
TAMIL GIRL PLUCKING TEA 119
A KANDYAN CHIEFTAIN 124
PARSEE TOWER OF SILENCE, BOMBAY 129
A BOMBAY RAILWAY STATION 136
A BOMBAY POLICEMAN 141
HIS HIGHNESS THE MAHARAJAH OF JEYPORE 148
A MATCHED PAIR OF BULLOCKS, JEYPORE 153
STREET SCENE, JEYPORE, SHOWING PALACE OF THE WINDS 157
COURT DANCERS AND MUSICIANS, JEYPORE 162
THE TAJ MAHAL, AGRA 169
ALABASTER SCREEN ENCLOSING ARJAMAND'S TOMB, TAJ MAHAL 175
INLAID WORK IN MAUSOLEUM OP ITIMAD-UD-DAULAH, AGRA 182
SCENE ON THE GANGES, BENARES 188
BENARES BURNING GHAT, WITH CORPSES BEING PURIFIED IN
THE GANGES 191
BENARES HOLY' MEN 198
A BRAHMIN PRIEST 203
A CALCUTTA NAUTCH DANCER 207
GENERAL POST-OFFICE, CALCUTTA 212
SHIPPING ON THE HOOGHLY, CALCUTTA 215
CALCUTTA COOLIES 222
HONG KONG HARBOR 229
HONG KONG'S MOUNTAINSIDE 233
A FORMER "HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR" OF HONG KONG 240
TEMPLE OF THE FIVE HUNDRED GENII, CANTON 247
From photograph by A-Chan.
CITY OF BOATS, CANTON, WHERE GENERATIONS ARE BORN
AND DIE 254
EXAMINATION BOOTHS, CANTON 261
From photograph by A-Chan.
PRINCIPAL SECTION OF MACAO 270
FRONTIER GATE BETWEEN CHINA PROPER AND THE
PORTUGUESE COLONY 275
MONUMENT AND BUST OF CAMOENS, MACAO 279
IN A FAN-TAN GAMBLING HOUSE, MACAO 288
TYPICAL BUSINESS STREET IN A CHINESE CITY 293
From photograph by A-Chan.
EXHIBITION OF BODIES OF CHINESE MALEFACTORS WHO
HAVE BEEN STRANGLED 300
SIMPLE PUNISHMENT OF A CHINESE MENDICANT 305
CHINESE BUDDHIST PRIESTS 311
BRONZE DAIBUTSU AT KAMAKURA, JAPAN 319
From photograph by Frederic C. Penfield.
A GARDEN VIEW OF THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, TOKYO 328
From photograph by Frederic C. Penfield.
JAPANESE JUNK, OR CARGO BOAT 337
EAST OF SUEZ
CHAPTER I
THE WORLD'S TURNSTILE AT SUEZ
When historical novels and "purpose" books dealing with great industries
and commodities cease to sell, the vagrant atoms and shadings of history
ending with the opening of the two world-important canals might be
employed by writers seeking incidents as entrancing as romances and
which are capable of being woven into narrative sufficiently interesting
to compel a host of readers. The person fortunate enough to blaze the
trail in this literary departure will have a superabundance of material
at command, if he know where and how to seek it.
The paramount fact-story of all utilitarian works of importance is
unquestionably that surrounding the great portal connecting Europe with
Asia. As romances are plants of slow growth in lands of the Eastern
hemisphere, compared with the New World, the fascinating tale of Suez
required two or three thousand years for its development, while that of
Panama had its beginning less than four hundred years ago. In both cases
the possession of a canal site demanded by commerce brought loss of
territory and prestige to the government actually owning it. The
Egyptians were shorn of the privilege of governing Egypt through the
reckless pledging of credit to raise funds for the completion of the
waterway connecting Port Saïd and Suez, and the South American republic
of Colombia saw a goodly slice of territory pass forever from her rule,
with the Panama site, when the republic on the isthmus came suddenly
into being.
Vexatious and humiliating as the incidents must have been to the
Egyptians and the Colombians, the world at large, broadly considering
the situations, pretends to see no misfortune in the conversion of
trifling areas to the control of abler administrators, comparing each
action to the condemning of a piece of private property to the use of
the universe. When the canal connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific
shall be completed, no more waterways uniting oceans will be necessary
or possible. But, did a weak people possess a site that might be
utilized by the ebbing and flowing of the globe's shipping, when a canal
had been made, they would obviously hesitate a long time before
voluntarily parading its advantages.
The uniting of the Mediterranean and Red seas was considered long before
the birth of Christ, and many wise men and potentates toyed with the
project in the hoary ages. The Persian king, Necho, was dissuaded
sixteen hundred years before the dawn of Christianity from embarking in
the enterprise, through the warning of his favorite oracle, who insisted
that the completion of the work would bring a foreign invasion,
resulting in the loss of canal and country as well. The great Rameses
was not the only ruler of the country of the Nile who coquetted with the
project. In 1800 the engineers of Napoleon studied the scheme, but their
error in estimating the Red Sea to be thirty feet below the
Mediterranean kept the Corsican from undertaking the cutting of a canal.
Mehemet Ali, whose energies for improving the welfare of his Egyptian
people were almost boundless, never yielded to the blandishment of
engineers scheming to pierce the isthmus; he may have known of the
prognostication of Necho's oracle.
Greater than any royal actor in the Suez enterprise, however, was
Ferdinand de Lesseps, the Frenchman whom history persists in calling an
engineer. By training and occupation he was a diplomatist, probably
knowing no more of engineering than of astronomy or therapeutics.
Possessing limitless ambition, he longed to be conspicuously in the
public gaze, to be great. He excelled as a negotiator, and knew this;
and it came easy to him to organize and direct. In his day the
designation "Captain of Industry" had not been devised. In the project
of canalizing the Suez isthmus--perennial theme of Cairo bazaar and
coffee-house--he recognized his opportunity, and severed his connection
with the French Consulate-General in Egypt to promote the alluring
scheme, under a concession readily procured from Viceroy Saïd. This was
in 1856.
Egypt had no debt whatever when Saïd Pasha signed the document. But when
the work was completed, in 1869, the government of the ancient land of
the Pharaohs was fairly tottering under its avalanche of obligations to
European creditors, for every wile of the plausible De Lesseps had been
employed to get money from simple Saïd, and later from Ismail Pasha, who
succeeded him in the khedivate. For fully a decade the raising of money
for the project was the momentous work of the rulers of Egypt; but more
than half the cash borrowed at usurious rates stuck to the hands of the
money brokers in Europe, let it be known, while the obligation of Saïd
or Ismail was in every instance for the full amount.
Incidentally, a condition of the concession was that Egypt need
subscribe nothing, and as a consideration for the concession it was
solemnly stipulated that for ninety-nine years--the period for which the
concession was given--fifteen per cent, of the gross takings of the
enterprise would be paid to the Egyptian treasury.
[Illustration: PORT SAID ENTRANCE TO SUEZ CANAL, SHOWING DE LESSEP'S
STATUE]
Learning the borrowing habit from his relations with plausible De
Lesseps, the magnificent Ismail borrowed in such a wholesale manner, for
the Egyptian people and himself, that in time both were hopelessly in
default to stony-hearted European creditors. Egyptian bonds were then
quoted in London at about half their face value, and Britons held a
major part of them.
England had originally fought the canal project, opposing it in every
way open to her power and influence at Continental capitals. The belief
in time dawning upon the judgment of Britain that the canal would be
finished and would succeed, her statesmen turned their energies to
checkmating and minimizing the influence of De Lesseps and his dupe
Ismail. The screws were consequently put on the Sultan of Turkey--whose
vassal Ismail was--resulting in that Merry Monarch of the Nile being
deposed and sent into exile, and the national cash-box at Cairo was at
the same time turned over to a commission of European
administrators--and is yet in their keeping.
But the miserable people of Egypt, the burdened fellaheen, resented the
interference of Christian money-lenders, demanding more than their pound
of flesh. The Arabi rebellion resulted, when British regiments and
warships were sent to quell the uprising and restore the authority of
the Khedive. That was nearly a quarter of a century ago; but since the
revolution the soldiers and civil servants of England have remained in
Egypt, and to all intents and purposes the country has become a colony
of England. The defaulted debts of the canal-building period were
responsible for these happenings, be it said.
Verily, the fulfilment of Necho's oracle came with terrible force, and
generations of Nile husbandmen must toil early and late to pay the
interest on the public debt incurred through Ismail's prodigality. This
degraded man in his exile persistently maintained that he believed he
was doing right when borrowing for the canal, for it was to elevate
Egypt to a position of honor and prominence in the list of nations. And
it is the irony of fate, surely, that Ismail's personal holding in the
canal company was sacrificed to the British government for half its
actual value, on the eve of his dethronement, and that every tittle of
interest in the enterprise held by the Egyptian government--including
the right to fifteen per cent, of the receipts--was lost or abrogated.
Owning not a share of stock in the undertaking, and having no merchant
shipping to be benefited, Egypt derives no more advantage from the great
Suez Canal than an imaginary kingdom existing in an Anthony Hope novel.
The canal has prospered beyond the dreams of its author; but this means
no more to the country through which it runs than the success of the
canals of Mars. De Lesseps died in a madhouse and practically a pauper,
while Ismail spent his last years a prisoner in a gilded palace on the
Bosporus, and was permitted to return to his beloved country only after
death. These are but some of the tragic side-lights of the great story
of the Suez Canal.
A few years since there was a movement in France to perpetuate De
Lesseps's name by officially calling the waterway the Canal de Lesseps.
But England withheld its approval, while other interests having a right
to be heard believed that the stigma of culpability over the Panama
swindles was fastened upon De Lesseps too positively to merit the
tribute desired by his relatives and friends. As a modified measure,
however, the canal administration was willing to appropriate a modest
sum to provide a statue of the once honored man to be placed at the
Mediterranean entrance of the canal.
There stands to-day on the jetty at Port Saïd, consequently, a bronze
effigy of the man for a few years known as "_Le grand Français_," visage
directed toward Constantinople (where once he had been potent in
intrigue), the left hand holding a map of the canal, while the right is
raised in graceful invitation to the maritime world to enter. This piece
of sculpture is the only material evidence that such a person as
Ferdinand de Lesseps ever lived. The legacy to his family was that of a
man outliving his importance and fair name.
The name Port Saïd commemorates the viceroy granting the concession,
while Ismail the Splendid has his name affixed to the midway station on
the canal, Ismailia, where tourists scramble aboard the train bound for
Cairo and the Nile. The actual terminus at the Suez end is called Port
Tewfik, after Ismail's son and successor in the khedivate. This
convenient mode of perpetuating the names of mighty actors in the Suez
drama suggests a certain sentimentality, but the present generation
cares as little for the subject as for a moldy play-bill hanging in a
dark corner of a club-house.
As an engineering feat the construction of the canal was nothing
remarkable. Any youth knowing the principles of running lines and
following the course of least resistance might have planned it. In Cairo
and Alexandria it is flippantly said that De Lesseps traced with his
gold-headed walking-stick the course of the canal in the sand, while
hundreds of thousands of unpaid natives scooped the soil out with their
hands. The work was completed with dredges and labor-saving machinery,
as a fact. The enterprise cost practically $100,000,000--a million
dollars a mile; and half this was employed in greasing the wheels at
Constantinople and Paris, Probably the work could to-day be duplicated,
by using machinery similar to that employed on the Chicago Drainage
Canal, for $25,000,000. The task would be a digging proposition, pure
and simple.
A cardinal article of faith of the legal status of the canal is its
absolute internationality. By its constitution no government can employ
it in war time to the exclusion or disadvantage of another nation. By a
convention becoming operative in 1888 the canal is exempt from blockade,
and vessels of all nations, whether armed or not, are forever to be
allowed to pass through it in peace or time of war.
[Illustration: ITALIAN WARSHIP STEAMING THROUGH CANAL]
Critics of Britain's paramount interest in India and her aspirations in
the Far East, nevertheless, pretend to see a decided advantage accruing
from England's control of things Egyptian. They claim that Britain's
position is immensely strengthened by the presence in Cairo and
Alexandria, within a few hours' journey of the canal, of a half-dozen
regiments of redcoats ready for any emergency. Another proof of
England's interest in the great universal artery of travel is the
maintaining of guard-ships at either terminus, which incidentally keep
watchful eyes on the coal-bins of Suez and Port Saïd, A vessel
unofficially sunk in an awkward position in the canal might delay for
weeks the arrival of an unfriendly fleet in Asiatic waters.
The British government and British trade have fattened tremendously from
the canal. Being the short-cut to England's treasure-house in the East,
it is more or less equitable that Britain's flag flies over sixty per
cent, of the canal traffic; and, fully as important, is the tremendous
increase in value of the shares in the company held by the British
government. It was in 1875 that Disraeli secured to his countrymen the
permanent control of the canal through the purchase from embarrassed
Ismail of that potentate's personal holding in the undertaking. This
midnight negotiation, conducted over the cable, was Disraeli's most
material triumph as a statesman. For $20,000,000 he purchased shares
having now a market value of $135,000,000. A few hours after the
consummation of this negotiation a group of French bankers, then in
Cairo, seeking to acquire the shares, were amazed to learn that they had
been outwitted. A well-posted newspaper correspondent at the French
capital had informed Britain's ambassador of the purpose of the
bankers' visit to Egypt--and astute Disraeli did the rest.
This transferred from France to her rival across the channel the right
to direct the policy of De Lesseps's creation. But French
susceptibilities have always been considered in matters connected with
the conduct of the enterprise--it is still "La Compagnie Universelle du
Canal Maritime de Suez," the tariff is based on French currency, the
principal office is in Paris, and the official language of the company
is French.
The world knows the Suez marine highway only in its utilitarian aspect,
and America's interest therein is that attaching to it as an enterprise
forerunning Uncle Sam's route at Panama. Before many years have passed
the two canals will to some extent be rivals. The Suez cutting is
practically ninety-nine miles in length, and at present 121 feet wide,
with a depth accommodating craft drawing twenty-six feet and three
inches. To handle modern battleships and the increasing size of cargo
steamers, both depth and width are to be increased. Having no sharp
curvatures, and excavated at a level from sea to sea, ships proceed by
night assisted by electric lights with the same facility as by day. The
time consumed in transit is from fourteen to eighteen hours. Not for a
decade has a sailing vessel used the canal, and the widest craft ever
traversing the canal was the dry-dock _Dewey_, sent under tow by the
government from the United States to the Philippines. The tariff is now
reduced to $1.70 per ton register, and $2 for every passenger. A ship's
crew pay nothing. The toll for a steamer of average size, like a
Peninsular and Orient liner, is about $10,000. I first passed the canal
in a yacht of the New York Yacht Club, for which the tax was $400, and
the last time I made the transit was in a German-Lloyd mail steamer
which paid $7,000 for tonnage and passengers.
The canal's value to the commerce of the world is sufficiently proved by
the saving of distance effected by it, as compared with the route around
the Cape of Good Hope. By the latter the distance between England and
Bombay is 10,860 miles, by the canal 4,620 miles, and from New York to
the leading ports of India the Cape route is about 11,500 miles, while
by the canal the journey is shortened to 7,900 miles. How rapidly the
traffic attracted by the economy in distance thus effected has
developed, is best illustrated by the following statement, taken
quinquennially from the company's returns:
Year Steamers Net Tonnage Receipts in Francs
1871 765 761,467 7,595,385
1876 1,457 2,069,771 27,631,455
1881 2,727 4,136,779 47,193,880
1886 3,100 5,767,655 54,771,075
1891 4,206 8,699,020 83,421,500
1896 3,407 8,594,307 79,652,175
1901 3,699 10,823,840 100,386,397
1906 3,780 11,750,000 103,700,000
The Suez company pays enormously, and more than half the current
earnings go to the possessors of the several grades of bonds and
shares. Great Britain is the preponderating user of the canal, with
Germany a poor second. Holland, due to proprietorship of Dutch India, is
third in the list, and the nation of De Lesseps is fourth. The United
States stands near the foot of the roll of patrons, being only
represented by an occasional warship, transport going to or coming from
the Philippines, or a touring yacht. It is a pathetic fact that our
country, paramount producer of the world, has not been represented for
nearly a decade by the Stars and Stripes over a commercial craft in the
Suez canal. Cargoes go or come between American ports and those of the
Orient, of course, but they are borne in British bottoms or those having
register in other foreign nations. Fifteen or sixteen years ago England
was represented in Suez statistics by seventy-five per cent. of the
total traffic; but her proportion has decreased until it is now under
sixty per cent. Kaiser William making a systematic fight for new markets
in China and throughout Australasia, the statistics of Germany in canal
traffic are slowly advancing.
At present, with the Suez enterprise in operation thirty-eight years,
the average number of ships using the waterway is approximately ten each
day. This is one vessel every two hours and thirty-five minutes during
the twenty-four hours--meaning an eastbound craft every five hours and
ten minutes, and a westbound every five hours and ten minutes.
The idea of wedding the Atlantic and the Pacific must have been original
with the first observant and intelligent person viewing the two oceans
from the hills of the Central-American isthmus. Presumably he was a
Spanish adventurer, and the time practically four hundred years ago. A
century before the landing on American soil of the Pilgrim Fathers,
explorers were informing Charles V of Spain of the opportunity supplied
by nature to connect the waters of the two oceans. In 1550, one Galvao,
a Portuguese navigator, wrote a book to prove the feasibility of an
artificial connection between the Atlantic and the Pacific; and in 1780
a scientific commission from Spain studied the three Central-American
routes--Panama, San Blas, and Nicaragua. These are simple facts to be
pondered over by busy people who may possibly be in doubt as to whether
the "father" of the isthmian enterprise was De Lesseps, Theodore
Roosevelt, or Admiral Walker.
But it required a knowledge of practical geography to learn that from
Colon to Panama by sea is eight thousand miles, instead of forty-seven
across country--and it took a dauntless American President to demand
that his government construct a national water route across the isthmus
at Panama, and to point the way to that end; and this was done against
potent opposition to any canal, and expressed preference of powerful
statesmen for the unfeasible Nicaraguan project.
It may be profitable for enthusiasts jumping at the conclusion that the
American canal will pay from its opening, to study the returns of the
Suez enterprise, the first full year of whose operation (1870) showed
gross takings of only $1,031,365 from tolls levied upon 486 vessels.
Speaking generally, a shipper sends his cargo by way of Suez only when
3,000 miles at least of ocean steaming may be saved--this is the
approximate economy effected by the great turnstile between West and
East, counting time, fuel, wages and other expenses. It may be accepted
as a concrete fact that the employment of any canal by commerce must
ever depend upon economic considerations.
Already acknowledging our commercial predominance, Europeans are not
blind to the real purpose of the Panama Canal. But it should be borne in
mind that whenever it is an open choice between the canal toll and the
equivalent of time at sea, the Briton will be slow to decide in favor of
contributing to the resources of a nation rising in brief time to
commercial premiership; and Frenchmen, economists by nature, will take a
similar view, as will Germans, and shippers of other nations. Expressed
in the fewest words, the employment of the Panama route will be governed
exclusively by self-interest, computed from the standpoint of material
economy; sentimentality will bring not one ship to Uncle Sam as a
patron--unless it be an American ship.
Suez will always be favored by European shipmasters determining routes
for cargoes in which Panama and Suez present advantages practically
equal; probably the expense of a few hundred miles additional travel
would not cause them to break from the old route, by which there is no
risk of accident or delay from canal-locks. A considerable percentage of
the oversea carrying trade controlled by British bottoms is
geographically independent of canals, and will always be. For example,
the bulk of traffic to and from the west coast of South America--the
rich nitrate trade of Iquique and Valparaiso--will not ordinarily be
altered by the Panama Canal. The economy of distance from the latter
port to England and the Continent by the canal being only about 1,500
miles, this traffic, except under unusual circumstances, will continue
as long as it goes in British vessels to round the extremity of South
America.
Singapore will be the Asiatic port differentiating the attracting power
of the Panama and Suez canals, speaking from the basis of Atlantic and
Gulf ports as points of origin or destination. Cargoes for places west
of the 105th degree of east longitude will logically be sent through the
Mediterranean and the Suez Canal. But the area east of the Singapore
degree of longitude is teeming with opportunity for Panama cargoes. The
isthmian short cut to Oceanica and Asia, comprising the coastal section
of China's vast empire, enterprising Japan, the East Indies, Australia,
New Zealand, and our own Philippine archipelago, is the world's most
potential area. The awakened Orient can use American products to
practically limitless extent. One third of the trade of these lands
would make America great as a world-provider, and could be secured if we
embarked seriously in an effort to obtain it. Students of economics have
never admitted the logic of America's sending cotton to England to be
there converted into fabrics clothing half the people of the East.
Let the reader, content in belief that our manufactures have an
extensive use in the outer world, because America heads the list of
exporting nations, investigate the subject, and his reward will be to
learn that _we export only a trifle more than six per cent. of what we
manufacture_. Let him also study the statistics of our commerce with
South America, natural products and manufactures of every sort--they are
replete with astonishing facts. To discover that our exports to the
southern continent do not equal $2 per capita of South America's
population will surprise the investigator, doubtless; and that the
volume of trade is overwhelmingly with England and Germany will likewise
be disconcerting. South America has 40,000,000 people; but Mexico's
13,500,000 inhabitants buy nearly as much from Uncle Sam as the South
Americans. We now sell Canadians products averaging $30 per capita
annually.
The reason for the startling disparity in the statistics of trade
intercourse with our adjoining neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and oversea
South America, is obviously the lack of transportation facilities under
the American flag; and the adage that "trade follows the flag" has
earned more significance than attaches to a mere figure of speech. We
pay South America yearly, let it be known, about $120,000,000 for
coffee, wool, hides and other raw products; and the major share of this
money is expended in Europe for the necessities and luxuries of life.
This is inequitable, to say the least, and should be remedied. Uncle Sam
must look to the Orient, as well, and seek to make China his best
customer. Every nation in Europe whose foreign trade is worth
considering exploits foreign countries in the thorough manner of a great
commercial house--getting business by the most productive, not the
easiest, methods. In frequent magazine articles I have insisted that the
isthmian canal, "destined to make the United States the trade arbiter of
the world," could never be expected to "pay" directly. The artificial
waterway is to cost a vast deal of money; with the payments to the
French company and to the republic of Panama, added to the sum necessary
to the completion of the work. Uncle Sam's expenditure cannot be less
than $225,000,000! It will probably be more. A private incorporation
embarked in the enterprise would hold that the investment was entitled
to five per cent. interest, say, and in time be funded. The money of the
nation, embarked in a project distinctly commercial, merits a reasonable
rate of income or benefit--four per cent. certainly. To operate the
canal with the expensive up-keep essential to a region of torrential
rains, cannot be less than $4,000,000 annually; if the Chagres River
refuses to be confined in bounds, the cost will be greater. The items
of yearly expense figured here total $13,000,000--a sum to be regarded
as the very minimum of the cost of maintaining and operating the canal.
[Illustration: CARGO STEAMER IN THE CANAL AT KILOMETER 133]
Optimistic students of ocean transportation statistics say the canal
will draw 10,000,000 tons of shipping a year; others, conservative of
opinion, say half this volume. Taking the mean of these estimates, I
hazard the statement that six years after the canal is opened, the
tonnage will be 7,500,000. The Suez Canal was operated more than thirty
years before its business aggregated 10,000,000 tons; and to attract
this volume, several reductions in tolls were necessary. The American
government cannot properly levy a heavier tribute at Panama than is
demanded at Suez, for the fact is, our canal will not be as essential as
that uniting Europe and the East. A like tariff would produce for Uncle
Sam, on the hypothesis of a business of 7,500,000 tons, only $12,750,000
a year; a higher tariff would probably produce less. And here is an
unpalatable truthlet--Panama's earnings from passengers can never be
considerable, compared with that constant ebbing and flowing of humanity
between the home countries of Europe and their dependencies in Asia,
Africa and Australasia. As a highway of travel, Panama can never have a
quarter of the income from passengers as that yearly accruing to the
Suez company. It may be unpopular to here record the opinion that the
_direct_ increment of the American canal cannot for many years yield
what in a commercial enterprise could be called a profit.
The way to compel the canal to pay _indirectly_ is to make it incidental
to the development of a mighty commercial marine, that will carry
American products to present foreign markets, and to new markets, under
the Stars and Stripes. This accomplished, the United States will
indisputably be the trade arbiter of the universe. With operations under
way on the isthmus, is not the time propitious for popular discussion
throughout the nation, and in official Washington, how best to _create_
the commerce that will make the Panama Canal a success from its opening?
We have populated the country, developed resources of field, forest and
mine, and devised matchless ways of translating natural products into
finished articles appealing to all mankind. Now, let us cease sending
these products of soil and workshop to market in British ships; let us
forward them in vessels constructed in American shipyards, thereby
making the transaction independently American. Already have we produced
ocean carriers equal to the best; while American war-ships, native from
keel to topmast truck, are the envy of the world.
Not for a decade has a commercial vessel under the American flag passed
the Suez Canal, I have stated. But the time was when Uncle Sam's ensign
was the emblem oftenest seen in foreign harbors.
In but one department of natural growth is the United States
backward--shipping, in its broad and commercial acceptance. To promote
it should now be the plan of both political parties.
Our canal can never pay until we enter as ship-owners into competition
with Europe's trading nations, and these possess a material interest in
the Suez undertaking, be it remembered. The commercial fleet at present
under the American flag could not pay a tenth of Panama's operating
expenses. When we seriously embark upon the work of creating a great
merchant marine, we are going to rouse spirited opposition. Englishmen,
Germans, and Frenchmen will not like it; and Europeans cannot be
expected to take any interest in the welfare of our national canal, and
all may object to fattening the treasury of a country that is their
trade competitor. These facts, insignificant as they may seem, prove in
reality the need for supplying hundreds of ocean carriers under the same
flag as that flying over the canal zone.
By the time the canal is opened, the United States will have 100,000,000
inhabitants; and agriculture, assisted by ordinary methods and by
irrigation, will have developed to an extent making our commodities
dictators of supply and price. By that time, sea transportation cannot
be regarded as a competitor of transcontinental railway systems that
have done much toward making the country what it is: water
transportation will be found a necessary adjunct to rail facilities,
relieving the roads of a fraction of their through traffic.
To restore the Stars and Stripes to the seas will require years of
earnest effort, much debating in the halls of Congress, a drastic
liberalizing of marine laws, and much prodding of human energies by
editorial writers.
Suez shareholders, when asked by Americans if they fear any rivalry from
Panama, reply: "None at all; unless"--and here is the kernel of the
matter--"your countrypeople find a way of creating a mercantile marine
coincidently with the building of the canal."
With unlimited financial resources to promote the most gigantic of
modern enterprises, with inexhaustible raw and cultivated products, with
labor to produce any conceivable commodity, the humiliating fact
confronted the people of the United States a few months since of seeing
its official delegates to the Pan-American Congress at Rio de Janeiro
set forth in a steamship flying the red flag of Great Britain.
The most remarkable accomplishment in the material history of the world
is that the United States secured her commercial supremacy without
possessing a merchant marine. It is one of the marvels of modern times,
surely.